Electrically powered equipment, including electronic devices such as computers, mass storage devices and switches, are often aggregated in so-called data centres. In the data centres, it has become common to store such equipment in racks. To allow for an easy servicing of the racks, the racks are often arranged in rows. Between two adjacent rows, an aisle is thus defined permitting servicing personal access to the equipment for installation, maintenance and removal purposes.
Most of the equipment housed inside the racks consumes enough electrical power to heat up the ambience. As there is often a thermal limit at which the equipment can be operated, steps for keeping the operational temperature underneath a critical level have to be taken. For example, many electrical devices such as computers are equipped with fans or other internal cooling mechanisms. These mechanisms generate a flow of a cooling medium such as ambient air through the devices for cooling the internal electronic components.
However, and in particular when the electrical devices are packed tightly in the racks, the cooling effect of ambient air is often not sufficient. Moreover, ambient air tends to heat up in data centres, and this fact additionally decreases the cooling efficiency. One approach to combat the heating up of ambient air is the installation of climate control systems in data centres. The climate control systems are configured to control ambient parameters such as the temperature and the humidity of the air inside the data centres.
It has been observed that in many data centres the flow around and into the racks of cooled and/or de-humidified air generated by the climate control systems is more or less arbitrary. This results in a poor cooling efficiency. In other words, the climate control systems consume more electrical power than actually necessary.
In order to increase the cooling efficiency, various techniques for concentrating and directing a flow of a cooling medium towards the racks have been proposed. In this regard, U.S. Pat. No. 6,672,955 B2 teaches an air flow management system wherein the aisles defined by two adjacent rows of racks are covered on a top end. This covering approach prevents the cooling medium supplied through the floor of the aisle from exiting the aisle in an upward direction. As another example, WO 2006/124240 A2 proposes baffles and doors to prevent an ambient medium from laterally entering the aisle. Thus, a mixing of the ambient medium with the cooling medium (which is again supplied through a floor of the aisle) can be prevented, and the cooling efficiency is thus increased. As a still further example, US 2005/0099770 A1 teaches to fully enclose the aisle and to supply the cooling medium from the outside through the racks. According to this approach, the heated-up cooling medium is then collected in the enclosed aisle and can be easily removed without mixing with the cooling medium.